


Kingmaker

by duelstance (valoirs)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Gen, Kingsglaive Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 05:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8131699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valoirs/pseuds/duelstance
Summary: The Kings' power, they'd called it.Well, she thought, maybe it's time to change that.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Dabbling a bit in new fandoms and trying to stretch my comfort zone a bit, especially since I watched Kingsglaive recently! This fic emerged largely from my desire for a certain turn of events to occur while watching the movie. Because of my (admittedly) limited knowledge of the FFXV lore, I've taken quite a few liberties and there may be a number of inaccuracies, but I tried my best to refer to the movie and wiki as much as possible. Here's hoping I did some level of justice to Luna's character, so please enjoy!

 

It started in slow motion, as things did in movies, and Luna thought of the last time she'd watched any sort of movie in the room she had been relegated to in Niflheim, walls swathed in finery and floors pristine. They'd carefully filtered the media she had access to, ensuring the gilded cage held only what they wanted her to see and hear. In the films pivotal scenes had been arranged in slow motion, limbs and bodies suspended in a dipping speed, and she wondered what it would be like to have everything she knew overlaid in the scant moments between breaths, memories transposed over the ticks of seconds. To replay it all in a matter of moments and come to a singular decision borne from all she had suffered through in mute defiance.

Ravus was burning before her eyes. This, too, came in slow motion, and she watched the lick of flames yawning at the edges of his fingers, climbing up the length of his arm like vines, twisting and snapping like jaws. When he screamed, Luna heard the scrape of it in the deepest point of her eardrums, the sound clawing deep, leaving gouged trails in its wake. He was still her brother. Her brother, who had laughed with her when she was young, who once held her hand like it was spun from the Crystal itself, fingers curling tenderly around hers. Her brother, who had the light in his eyes extinguished, hope immolated alive until resentment rose from the ashes. Her brother, who now served Niflheim as a high-ranking Imperial officer.

This was her brother whom she once loved, and Luna stood in silence as she watched him burn.

The ring fell to the ground, metal tinkling against the polished marble ground. It rolled slowly, the sound echoing like the ticks of a clock, and then it came to a rest at the King Regis' feet. He was barely standing, his chest heaving with exertion.

And then Glauca was already lunging for him.

Time slowed again as his sword pierced Regis' chest, driving him forward into the adjacent wall like an impaled ragdoll. A scream swam by on the edge of her consciousness, and for all she heard it, it could have been either hers or Nyx's. In a moment the soldier was already throwing himself in Glauca's direction.

Through the haze of shock, Luna's eyes fell on the ring, and she took several numb steps forward. She surveyed it wordlessly as she knelt to grasp it. She could let Nyx fight, as she'd done before, but even as he struck at Glauca, his dagger clashing against the general's greatsword, none of Regis' magic rolled off of him. Not the way it had while the magic was still on loan, when he was alive.

In the back of her mind, the gods murmured unintelligible nothings, their voices waxing and ebbing in tune with the pulse that throbbed beneath her breastbone. Their whispers grew more insistent as she held the ring, the warmth of her palm seeping slowly into the cool metal. Yes, she could let Nyx fight.

But.

 _I do not fear death,_ she told herself, the same way she had countless times, and she believed it with everything she knew. An eerie calm settled inside her. The world sharpened, colors kaleidoscoping into fine points, sound funneling down to the lone thump of her heartbeat hammering in her ears. Here was a moment that could change everything—if, in turn, she waged everything she had.

The Kings' power, they'd called it.

 _Well,_ she thought, _maybe it's time to change that._

She grasped it with two fingers and slid it on, awaiting judgment the same way her brother had, lips pursed with grim determination. Light sparked at her fingertips, and time froze, Nyx and Ravus both suspended in motion, parallel freeze frames set on pause. The world shifted, shadow unraveling around her in spirals from where she stood, reality drowned in lieu of another realm. Luna stood in an abyss as the gods' voices murmured in the lower recesses of her mind, undaunted by the judgment of men who were only once kings.

Was it hubris, as Oracle, to challenge men who were once kings? To take up the mantle of another while his father lay dead mere feet from her?

Was it stealing his destiny for herself?

She waited patiently. Waiting was a game she had mastered long ago, when Ravus' anger had shown her that lashing out was not the way, when she'd realized the gods' murmurs grew discontent if her eyes became clouded. Luna could have waited an eternity if necessary, and if she remembered anything of how her mother had ruled as queen, it was that people took better to gentle requests than harsh demands. That love alone could not move a kingdom, but pairing it with steel could move its people to part oceans. The kings could speak first. She had all the time in the world here.

"You could have been queen, I see."

Luna turned, eyes alighting on the wisps of smoke coalescing nearby in the image of a man. "I could have," she agreed quietly, watching him watch her.

"Do you still wish to be?"

She turned her head to look for King Regis' reaction, only to remember that in this realm, only she stood awaiting judgment. He was gone now. She turned over everything she held so close in her heart—hope, duty, the sacrifice she had willingly made so many years ago, a gamble: risk one to save another. "No," she murmured. "I accepted that I would no longer be, when I chose to give that up." To play at being a caged bird under Niflheim's thumb, and she'd performed well enough, unwittingly luring Lucian soldiers to their deaths with thoughts of rescue, a hostage turned volatile in manipulative hands.

"They call this the King's power for a reason," the king told her, amused. She could not make out his face, only the ornate sprawl of his helmet, the detailed carvings on his heavy-set armor. "Who is worthy of wielding it, if not kings?"

Tenebrae once had a queen. The memory unraveled itself in the pit of her stomach, chasing the ache in her heart. "You rejected my brother, who could have been a king. Clearly you do not believe royal blood alone creates worthiness," Luna found herself saying, and other images coalesced around her—judge, jury, executioner all clustered around her in a circle, the only witnesses to her trial.

"He was a fool caught in the past," one king drawled, perfectly condescending, and Luna lifted her head to look at him, eyes burning into the holes of his helm.

"Are we not all caught in the past, then, facing the judgment of the kings of old?"

She remembered the past too as the words spilled out, voice demure if not for the sharp undertone. The weight of the gods settled in her throat, their own silence heavy in the wake of the constant murmurs she had grown so accustomed to hearing. Luna remembered her mother's smile, but the edges had frayed in the passage of time. When was the last time Ravus had spoken gently to her? When was the last time she had thought of Noctis without remembering _duty_ on the tip of her tongue and just how heavy the meaning of it sat on one's shoulders?

"This power transcends the trappings of past, present, and future," another snarled. "You come here to demand it, but what do you offer in exchange? You do not hold an ounce of Lucian blood."

"I came here not to demand," Luna corrected, steel woven in her words, sharpened to precision. To cut without maiming. She thought of Noctis again, the marriage. Ravus' disgust, the idea that this blood would necessitate sacrifices for the sake of the kingdom. _Mother loved us,_ she remembered, _but never more than Tenebrae itself._

This mantle was never hers to claim, but she would carry it, if only to impart it to another.

"I came here to ask what this kingdom means to you, if it must burn like it has. To ask what power ought to do, if not be used to safeguard the future or become a new beacon of hope." Luna clasped her hands and turned to survey the circle of kings around her. "What is the meaning of power if all its accomplishments remain in the past?" The wall must have crumbled by now, in the precious seconds that had passed after Glauca struck. There would be no shaping a new future, she knew, if the Imperials seized this power and reached Noctis without allowing him to claim his birthright.

This time the first voice spoke. "Do you think being Oracle makes you so capable of using this power for what it ought to do?" He sounded amused again, even as his voice grew distorted, a jumble of dissonant tones melding together. "That a single individual, Oracle or not, should wield it when she already is a vessel for unbridled power?"

The answer came to her immediately. "I am aware of my own mortality," Luna murmured, gaze sharp. "I do not believe I am best suited for this. But I ask that you allow me to hold this power, until I can be sure it passes to its rightful heir. Because someone must. Because no longer will I allow others to fight and throw their lives away to die for my sake. Because there is someone out there worthier, someone who cannot awaken to his own destiny until this power reaches him, and until someone delivers it to him properly, that will not happen."

She took a breath.

"I am not afraid to die if I can make that happen."

There was a whisper on the fringes of her mind, the gods' voices rising in steady crescendos. There was magic unfurling around her, beyond the realm itself. The circle flickered, disappeared, and in its wake a single man stood before her, familiar, his visage nothing like the helmeted legends that had watched her only moments prior.

"I know you can safeguard the future as well," he said, smiling sadly. "I knew it the moment you let go of my hand all those years ago, when you decided alone that you would shoulder that burden. You were never unworthy of this power."

King Regis reached out to touch her cheek, and the magic around her _sang_.

Tears stung at her eyes.

"You would have made the finest queen."

The moment his illusory fingers grazed her skin, his entire form broke down, exploding in motes of light. They flickered around Luna as they flooded into her body, fire concentrating in her hand. It surged through her, a purifying flame, singeing away all doubts in a wash of warmth. Her magic had been shackled until now, constraints set in place by the emperor's most adept mages. Those too burned away under the strength of the Lucii.

Freedom. Her blood sang, the magic sang, and the power—it all sang to her in tune with the fragmented murmurs she heard from the gods. The darkened abyss around her fell away in a deluge of color. She watched as time resumed around her and the way Glauca struck at Nyx with a heavy swing of his sword, pushing him back.

Luna reached for the magic and it responded, whorls of metal swirling near her as she faced Glauca and lifted her arm. Around her the swords of the old kings manifested, emerging in dazzling streams of light, their blades scintillating as the colors reflected off the razor-edge contours.

"So the kings of old have accepted you as well," Glauca sneered.

"Yes," she said, metal singing as she lifted her arm several degrees higher, the magic rising to her call, settling into her pores like she was meant to carry it all along. The Kings' power answered her call sweetly, sweeter than she ever thought it could, a symphony of sound uncurling talons and dragging them warningly down the length of her spine. Theirs was a power that could destroy her if it so chose, a power that did indeed transcend time.

Maybe, she thought, feeling the dozen blades shudder around her, she would not die here after all.

Luna crooked a finger, and the first sword swung.


End file.
